Monday, May 23, 2016

Zelda Game Buttons Extended

Another small improvement on the this blog following the label expansion. Since the sidebar with the game buttons is one of the few visual highlights on this site, I decided to extend it into full glory.

Now each Zelda game has its own button. Before today certain games were combined into one (the NES Classics, the Oracle games and the Four Swords games). Those got split and Link's Crossbow Training now also got its own button, which got put between Twilight Princess and the Tingle spin-off(s). That one might not seem all that important, but it arranges an even row, because I tried to group games that are connected somehow. For example the Four Swords saga is on its own row (Update: not anymore, see comments), as well are the games from the Nintendo DS and Wii era. It all turned out pretty well.

I also redesigned some existing buttons including A Link to the Past, Skyward Sword, Tri Force Heroes, Hyrule Warriors and Tingle's button. Press F5, if you don't see the new graphics yet.

But now that I look at it, switching The Wind Waker and Four Swords also does look good. Now you have a row of Capcom Zelda games, Four Swords and The Minish Cap are right above each other and The Wind Waker stays connected to the other GameCube games, instead of being up there alone.

If ever game got its own button, should there be three different Tingle buttons?

I realise that (A) Tingle's games are not as important (heck, two of them were never translated out of Japanese), and (B) adding two more would mess up your three columns without adding one extra button…

You could add a Hyrule Warriors Legends button if you wanted to do that.

I wonder, if one day I will get a comment with positive feedback instead of nitpicks... :-D

And if you really want to nitpick, technically there have been four different Tingle games, if you count the DSiWare Tingle Pack and Tingle's Balloon Fight, so I could easily add an entire row of Tingle games, if I really wanted to. But one button for him is more than enough... :-D The Tingle category is used for both his games and his character and since I'm not talking much about Tingle, so there's no need for expansion.

The button of Hyrule Warriors includes Hyrule Warriors: Legends, it's just an upgraded version of the first game. It would like adding a button for Majora's Mask 3D. That being said, I still have prepared a separate button for Legends as a "filler", which probably gets added alongside Zelda U. A button for Zelda Picross is also a possibility, but probably would be as important as the Tingle games...

And I just don't want to have a row with only one game at the end, because this would look bad/weird. Two games at the end are still fine (before the update this was even the case). This is why I keep some "fillers" around. It used to be the Tingle button, but now that one has a fixed spot right next to Crossbow Training. I will probably add a button for the new Zelda game after E3, which is when a new row gets added.

Anyway, the whole point of those buttons, besides the navigational feature, is to visually show my love for all the Zelda games, which all got posts on this blog at some point. This might even inspire me to make some posts about Zelda games, which I have neglected in the past, e.g. Four Swords Adventures.